The Day of the Pickled Bean

Today was the day.  It was marked on the calendar on my kitchen wall simply as "Beans".  Six weeks ago today I entered upon an experiment to determine a method of pickling beans just as my husband's grandmother, Bessie Boyd Estep, did years ago.  I held in my hand a copy of her recipe gleaned from an old copy of the Charleston Gazette.  As is the case in most old recipes, some of which use ingredients like lard and fat back, the instructions were not crystal clear, so I did the best I could and ended up with four jars of pickled green beans, two which sealed when the hot lids were put on them and two which were sealed by boiling them for five minutes.  All four jars were duly installed in the closet in our basement which is appropriately cool and dark.

After the first week I had a little clue that the two sets of jars were not going to cure identically.  I came in from the garage one morning and smelled something "funny".  I couldn't quite figure it out, but after a few moments of investigation I deduced that the smell was similar to sauerkraut.  Oh, no.

The seal had broken on the two jars which had sealed simply by heating the lids.  The smell came from the liquid which had spilled out.  Everything was nice and tight on the two cooked jars.  I wiped them off and put newspapers under all the jars to absorb spills in case my worst fear was realized:  the jars would explode from the pressure of the fermentation taking place.

I checked the jars every once in a while.  In four weeks I noticed that there were bubbles rising from the bottom of the two jars with the broken seals.  This is not ever good in canned vegetables.  

The jars survived without exploding.  The day arrived that we had eagerly anticipated.  When Larry saw the jars sitting on the kitchen table, he, of course, reached for one of the jars whose seals had broken.   He removed the lid and foamy pickled bean juice spewed everywhere.  Again, not good.  Anytime I cook a meal that doesn't require a trip to the emergency room, I consider that meal a success, and I didn't want to ruin my record with a jar of pickled beans.   As Larry held the jar over the sink, he tentatively picked one of the beans out and held it to his lips.  Now I did not scream "NO" and leap over the table to slam the jar from his hands and slap the bean from his lips.  But I thought about it.

"Don't eat that!" I said, rather forcefully.  "Look at how foamy that is!  You can't eat that!"  So he put that jar down and opened one of the jars with an intact seal.  No foaming.  He smelled the beans; he tasted the beans.  He said to me, "Try one!"

"What do they taste like?" I asked.  He replied, "Salty beans."  Well, great.  All of this to have a jar of very salty beans.  Having never eaten pickled beans before, I had to rely on Larry to tell me that, yes, this is the way pickled beans are supposed to taste.    

This evening I have two quarts of pickled beans in the garbage can downstairs and two quarts of pickled beans in the kitchen, the result of the great pickled bean experiment of 2012.  Bessie Boyd Estep, if you'd been more specific I could have had four quarts of beans in the kitchen.  But now I know what she meant by "seal the jars tightly".

The Great Pickled Bean Experiment

First.  Let me be, well, just crystal clear about something.  I do not like pickled beans.  I don't like pickled corn or pickled peppers, either.  However, my husband's family likes all that stuff.  My father-in-law has consistently "set a churn" of Hungarian wax peppers every fall for at least the last 39 years, because that's how long Larry and I have been married.  One of my first memories of being at the Estep house is of Larry offering me a carrot from a crock of hot peppers.  When I resisted, he said, "Go on.  Taste it.  It's not that hot."  It was that hot.  Cracking hot as I remember and very, very salty.  I can't remember a time when I saw Larry's uncle from California that he didn't ask me if I knew how to make pickled beans.  No, no, I do not know how to make pickled beans, but Larry has talked for 39 years about how his grandmother made salt brine pickled beans in jars, not a crock, and how good they were.

Oddly enough my neighbor, just this week, asked me if I knew how to make pickled beans.  We had a long discussion about it.  He recounted memories of eating beans straight from the crock; I told him about Larry's grandma.  But I wasn't able to help him with making pickled beans.

I relate to a story I read on the internet in which a woman said the first time she had pickled beans, she quietly scraped them off her plate into the garbage after the meal because she thought they were spoiled, and she was embarrassed to bring it up in front of her hosts.  That's the way I feel about pickled corn, which I have made.  It really, really stinks.

Recently I signed up for a service on the internet that allows the user to search and view copies of old newspapers, some dating back to the 1600s.  I've been scouring over those pages, looking mostly for obituaries but eager to read any stories that relate to family members.  As I searched, I found many "hits" for Bessie Estep in the Charleston Gazette.  It seems that she liked to read a column called, "Tell Dottie", in which readers could ask questions about housekeeping and cooking, and other readers responded with answers.  Bessie liked this column a lot.

I found recipes she sent in for pea salad, milkshake pie, and stuffed pork chops.  Then, as if a light shone from heaven, the flickering screen of the computer revealed Bessie Estep's recipe for pickled beans.

"There are two primary ways for pickling beans, and we want to thank Mrs. Ruth McCray of Corley, Mrs. Pearl Wills of Madison, Mrs. Gypsie Vance of Spencer, Mrs. Bessie Estep of Powellton, Mrs. Owen D. Fields of Gandeeville, Mrs. Martha E. Miller of Danville, Mrs. Mack Green of Chesapeake and Mrs. Sarah Hatcher of Charleston for sharing their recipes with our readers.

The first method requires only one step and is quite simple.  The beans should be strung, cleaned, broken and washed as for table use.  Cover with water; bring to a boil and cook for 30 minutes.  Drain thoroughly; wash several times in cold water and let stand until completely cold.  Pack in sterile quart jars; put one tablespoon coarse salt on top and fill with cold water.  Seal tightly; let stand six weeks in cool place.  The beans will be ready to eat at that time."  The Charleston Gazette, p. 29, July 1, 1971.  The article goes on to describe another method using vinegar and salt in jars and yet another method using salt brine in a stone jar.

Larry confirmed that his grandma didn't use vinegar, and she didn't use a crock, so this has to be how she made her pickled beans.  "Are you going to make some of these," he asked.  "I don't like pickled beans," I responded.  "But I do!!," he said.

So this morning I was cooking beans at 7:30 a.m. so they would cool enough to put in the jars by 9:00 a.m. or so.  Things went as well as can be expected.  Other than accidentally sticking three of my fingers in scalding water, there were no major incidents to report.  It didn't take me long to get my fingers out of the boiling water.  Then came the big question.  The "recipe" doesn't say whether the jars should be sealed in a boiling water bath.

Cooked or not cooked?  Can you tell the difference?

You see, people have not always been so careful about canning procedures.  As my neighbor related this week, the canning was done in open tubs out in the yard over a wood fire.  And I'm familiar with canning food by heating the lids or other double-secret canning processes that are not exactly legit anymore.

I ended up with four quarts of pickled beans.  As I was "fooling" with one of the jars, it made that lovely pinging sound and sealed.  Did that mean that all of the jars should seal?  I discussed this with Larry, and he said yes, he thought the jars should seal before we set them away in that cool place for six weeks.  I said that each jar was like a little stone crock.  Corn and peppers set to pickle in a crock aren't sealed, and they last for a long, long time once they've properly fermented.  Does "seal tightly" in the recipe mean the jars should seal?  Should I cook them in a boiling water bath to seal?  It seems to me, I said, that the heat from the cooking might destroy the natural pickling process that would take place.

As things ended up, two of the jars sealed on their own, uncooked.  I turned on the stove and cooked the other two jars in a boiling water bath.  They sealed.  I labeled those two jars "Cooked".  Being of a scientific bent, I will now observe the four jars and note the difference in the product of each of the two types of processing.  I looked on the calendar, and six weeks from today is October 4.  I simply wrote "beans" on that date in pencil.

On October 4 the results of the experiment will be finalized.  A major problem will be that I can't tell the difference in spoiled beans and pickled beans.